 From September 2018 to January 2020, I said a polite "no, thank you" to all forms of formal exercise. I stopped the CrossFit workouts I was previously doing up to six days a week. I stopped running, lifting, and scheduling time for a workout each day. I gave myself the full permission to do only what I wanted to do and for a solid year that meant nothing more than a restorative yoga pose (or two) and a walk around the farm with my dog. After 12+ months, I can officially say: a year off from formal exercise was one of the best things I've ever done for myself or my health. (Yes, ever.) As a teenager, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Takayasu's Arteritis. It's characterized by inflammation of the blood vessels that can result in, among other things, narrowed arteries. Many months after my diagnosis and MANY medications later, I eventually felt good enough to resume a somewhat normal life.
For me, that meant getting back to school, looking once more at colleges, and settling back into my routine with swim practices and daily workouts. While I had to swap out the swim events I used to love (long distance events) for shorter strokes and distances that didn't overly tax my body (and those ateries), I was able to graduate from high school before swimming competitively as a NCAA DIII Athlete at the University of Mary Washington. I'd only ever known year-around athletic endeavors (I started swimming year-round at 8), so once I graduated college I went on to find another form of exercise that I'd love just as much. (Or maybe more... jumping into a cold pool before the sun comes up takes its toll, ha!) I trained for and ran a half-marathon and explored a variety of different at-home, bodyweight routines (calesthenics, anyone?) before finally settling upon CrossFit. I was one of those people who loved to workout probably because I always did and because it always felt good... until it didn't. About two months before I officially "quit" exercising, I noticed things had started to change. I would get a headache almost immediately after I finished a workout (if not during). No matter how much I ate, it felt like it was never actually enough. I was sore ALL the time (and not just after a particularly hard practice). I was tired, struggling to sleep at night, and just geniunely unwell. But since these intense workouts left me feeling accomplished and proud -- and because exercise had always been the way I managed stress -- I brushed aside any concerns for as long as I could. It wasn't until I found myself swapping my lunch break for a nap break three days in a row (for the record, I am NOT a napper... and also I work from home), I figured something had to change. Although I'd been practicing CrossFit for over a year and honestly loving every second of it, it seemed like that type of physical activitiy no longer worked for my body. ... and this is the very first thing I learned during my year off.
I learned that just because I had done CrossFit for over a year without any problems... and just because I swam competitively in college and was used to two-a-day workouts... and just because exercise had always been something I'd done (and loved)... doesn't mean that exercise will always look the same (and produce the same results) for every season I'm in. With the headaches, fatigue, insatiable appetite, and ever-present soreness, my body was doing her best to let me know that (in this season) intense physical activity was not going to spit me out where I wanted to be. Perhaps my stress levels changed in other areas of life (which is important because exercise is a stressor and stress is cumulative). Or maybe my body changed. Or maybe all of the exercise I was doing had simply compounded over the past year with lack of proper rest and recovery. Whatever the reason, I was in a season where what I used to do no longer produced good results. (In my case, it no longer felt good and started to actually hurt.) Which meant that the way I had always and ever known to take care of myself physically was no longer a way I could take care of myself physically. But here's the real kicker. Exercise wasn't just a way to take care of myself physically. Sure, "eat better and exercise more" seems to be the blanket-statement solution for most health challenges nowadays. But more than that, exercise was the way I managed stress -- emotional and mental stress from a bad day, fear, anxiety, depression, not enoughness, self-doubt, the list goes on and on. You name it, I used exercise to process it. So, this brings me to the very next thing I learned during my year away from the gym.
This might be a controversial opinion, or perhaps it's simply something we're not thinking about and therefore not talking about, but I find it's very common to use exercise to tend to our mental and emotional well-being (and exercise ALONE). For me, exercise truly was my meditation practice. It was the thing that cleared my head, kept me grounded, and turned a 'meh' day into a good one. I felt good after a workout. I felt accomplished. I felt proud. I felt productive and happy and, for lack of a better word, I felt better. You could even go as far as to say that there were many years where I ONLY felt "good" and "okay" and "happy" on the days that I worked out. It took a long time to realize this was the case because I worked out most days and it wasn't a problem... again, until it was. Exercise is a stressor and stress is cumulative. If there's a lot of stress already present on the body or in our lives, we want to be careful not to add too much more to our plates. We don't want to tip the scales to a point where we take ourselves out of short-term stress (which by itself can improve the immune system) and into chronic stress (which has a significant effect on the immune system and chronic illness). If you're living with an autoimmune disease, then your "stress meter" is probably already heightened, right? If not from the stress of disease on your body, then from the stress of managing that disease in your life. So, when it comes to an exercise practice, we need to make sure we're not pushing ourselves over the edge. Because that's exactly what I was doing at CrossFit six-days-a-week, even though I loved every second of it. If I'm being totally honest, my exercise practice was likely too intense, too long in duration AND too frequent. I also had ever-changing amounts of stress present in my life and new desires leading my healthcare treatments (at that time, a desire to get off medication). Again, different seasons require different treatments and that's okay... unless all of a sudden you can't participate in the one and only practice that helps you feel good about yourself and your life. I talk about the unhealthy relationship I had with food, but it turns out I also had an unhealthy relationship with exercise. When I could no longer use a good sweat to make me feel secure, I realized I was dependent on a physical tool -- something that's designed primarily to elicit physical benefits -- for emotional stability. What do you do when you can no longer participate in the one self-care practice you have to feel okay? Where do you turn when it literally hurts to use the only outlet you've ever had for managing stress? Most of us just want to feel better. This is especially true when managing autoimmune disease. But we don't often ask ourselves what that actually means. Do we want to feel better physically? Mentally? Emotionally? A combination of all three and then some? When exercise left me feeling physically unwell, I had to decide if the mental relief from a good workout was "worth" the physical symptoms I'd have after. (Spoiler alert: It wasn't.) I value feeling good (thanks, autoimmune disease!) and there are other tools designed to provide that same relief (without the pain). When I stopped all formal exercise, I had an opportunity to figure out what it looked like to care for my mental and emotional health with mental and emotional tools (as opposed to physical ones). Instead of using an outer, physical tool to process my inner, emotional landscape, I was tasked with a finding a new way to feel good. It sounds cheesy, but finding those tools changed my life. Now, I get to re-incorporate exercise (because I'm a new season and my body is once again ready for formal activity) from a place of wanting it rather than needing it. I know how to feel good, happy, excited, grounded, {insert whatever else here} without turning to the gym or any other outer tool. If you feel like you can't feel the way you want because an autoimmune disease or health challenge limits what you can do, this is where I'd recommend spending your time. Explore these mental and emotional tools that can SERIOUSLY change your life. I get overly excited about this because exercise is a physical tool designed primarily for physical benefits. (I know you know this - promise I'm getting somewhere!) It offers an added secondary bonus of tending to our mental and emotional well-being and that's AWESOME. But, what if we can add to our toolbox? What if we can learn how to use mental and emotional tools (that offer mental and emotional benefits)... and what if those tools can then provide secondarily physical benefits? Because if we can tap into THOSE tools then we can WILDLY open up the healing journey with autoimmune disease, chronic illness, or other health challenge. That is so powerful because healing isn't a one-size-fits-all game. (End of soapbox. Thank you for reading. Back to the regularly scheduled blog post...)
I took a year off from formal exercise but I didn't alltogether stop participating in physical activity. I took walks with my pup almost daily. I stretched when it felt right and sunk into a restorative yoga pose when I wanted. To me, physical activity and exercise are no longer interchangeable. I often want, and need, physical activity. But as my year off showed, I don't always want, or need, exercise. I now like to think of physical activity as just movement. Walking. Getting up off the floor. Using the body in one way or another.⠀Exercise, on the other hand, is more formal. It's more rigid and strict. We have to sweat for it to count. Or get on a mat. Or go to the gym.⠀ I’ve learned that it's important to make time and space for physical activity when possible... but that we don't necessarily need to keep up with our exercise habits. (I think this is more permission giving than anything else.) I'll be back to exercising regularly at some point -- going to the gym to lift or heading out for runs. I still love to move, settling in for a formal practice often feels good, and I really enjoy challenging myself physically. But knowing that I don't need to exercise -- not to feel good or okay or as something I thought I had to do to be "healthy" -- is pretty darn freeing. Which leads to the very last thing I learned.
This one's kind of a given and something I've basically been talking about this entire post so far, but I've officially learned that it's great to mentally push myself to be active -- because it's good for the body and CAN help ease symptoms -- BUT (and this is a big "but") it's also good to physically respect the body and its boundaries. As much as I didn't like it when I first started to notice symptoms, boundaries change and that means our physical capacity might, too. Going to the gym will no longer be about how hard I can push day in and day out. It's now about finding my sweet spot and letting my body lead the way. I'd love to know: Have you ever intentionally stepped away from the gym? If so, how come and what did you learn?
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